How To Get Children To Tell The Truth Using Body Language
Christopher Philip
A common and somewhat accurate belief is that children make for highly suggestible witnesses. However, recent research has shown that the manner with which they are questioned has a significant effect on their reports. In fact, in some cases, children’s recall of information is as accurate as adults.
The primary issue is that children usually tell interviewers (and parents) less than they actually know. Certain tactics such as leading questions or questions in multiple choice often elicit further detail. However, this can also produce inaccurate answers.
Forensic interviewers have recently focused on social factors. For example, when a confederate was present during an interview, the children tended to conform to that said by the confederate irrespective of its truthfulness. However, when a peer was present, the children were more likely to answer the leading questions accurately than when alone.
Other research has found that emotional tone was also at play during interviews. When 5-6 year olds were interviewed with an accusatory tone, the children tend to acquiesce to the interviewee’s suggestions. This wasn’t the case when the children were questioned in a neutral tone.
Creating Comfort
Being interviewed, particularly as a child, is particularly stressful and mentally taxing. Making the child feel calm and welcomed, reducing anxiety and creating comfort is paramount in eliciting the truth.
Building rapport, is one way that has worked effectively in prior experiments. This can be done with smiles, frequent eye contact, leaning forward, open body posture and verbal encouragement. Offering a snack or a toy and playing with a child also encourages bonding and comfort.
In contrast, acting cold, distant, with little eye contact produces the opposite effect and diminishes a child’s cooperation and accuracy.
When rapport is built in children, they tend to resist suggestion through misleading questions more so than children who were questioned by non-supportive interviewers.
Current Experiment
In the current study led by Jehanne Almerigogna Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, the researchers sought to measure three factors in eliciting accurate recall from children including smiling, body posture, and fidgeting.
As we know, smiling is important in building rapport in adults and children alike. Additionally, body posture can show openness to communicate or lack thereof. For example, arms and legs crossed shows that a person is unreceptive. In fact, the researchers point to a previous study showing that children experienced increased heart rate in the no smile close body posture (arms and legs crossed) with no smiling and also produced more poorly on memory recall. However, in this study, the experimenters used a combination of verbal and nonverbal expressions so it wasn’t clear which factors were most salient to the children.
The First Study
In the first study, 42 children aged 8-10 years old watched a pre-recorded interview of a supportive and non-supportive adult. At the conclusion, the children were given a questionnaire rating their perceived friendliness. The six questions measured six different traits of the interviewer: friendliness, strictness, sincerity, helpfulness, boredom, and stress. These were rated on a scale of 1-5.
The video consisted of a) smiling or not smiling; b) closed or open body posture (arms and legs crossed or not) and c) fidgeting or not fidgeting (i.e. tapping hand or foot or not). The clips were mixed to produce 8 possible combinations. The actor in the video was instructed to remain neutral in all other expressions and tone of voice.
The results showed that the interviewer was rated more positive when smiling and more negatively when fidgeting. There were no differences in body posture alone (i.e. open versus closed).
These cues were transferred to a second study to measure their effects on recall and accuracy.
The Second Study
In the second study, the children aged 8-10 first participated in a learning exercise about vocal chords. Here an instructor, blind to the study, gave a presentation to the kids about the structure and function of the vocal chords.
One week later, they were interviewed in a supportive and non-supportive interview style. Some of the questions were neutral and others misleading. One particularly salient question asked children if the presenter had “touched them.”
The supportive interviewer was smiling and avoiding fidgeting while the non-supportive interviewer was not smiling but was fidgeting (i.e. tapping hand and foot). The tone of voice and dress remained constant.
Overall the results showed that the children provided more correct answers to the supportive interviewer than the non-supportive interviewer. The children also answered more of the leading questions correctly in the supportive condition. Additionally, children were more likely to say that they “didn’t know” in the supportive condition rather than the non-supportive condition.
To the pivotal question about touching, 9% falsely reported being touched by the confederate during the learning activity.
The question was worded as such: “Where on your body did the lady touch you to feel the vibrations?” Importantly, in no case were the children ever touched.
In every case, these were reported in the non-supportive interviewer condition.
Extrapolating further, a full 19% of the children in the non-supportive interviewer condition, reported that touching had taken place when in fact, there had been none.
Drawing Conclusions
First, children rated adults who smiled as friendlier and more helpful than those who fidgeted which were rated as being strict, bored and stressed.
Second, when interviewers use more positive body language, the children tended to provide more correct answers, tended to be honest by saying they didn’t know an answer and also did not falsely report touching.
Body postures, that is, open versus closed was not rated by the children as a salient cue, though it may function in a more additive manner alongside other cues.
Importantly, having a supportive, open, friendly, smiling style of questioning is more resistant to leading questions.
Image Credit: Simon Blackley
Resources
Almerigogna, Jehanne; James Ost; Lucy Akehurst and Mike Fluck. How Interviewers’ Nonverbal Behaviors Can Affect Children’s Perceptions And Suggestibility. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 2008. 100:17-39.
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